Othello in a T shirt

AMIT Budhiraja and Rinku Sachdeva had everything: good jobs, a nice flat, money to splurge, and a future that beckoned with promise. Or at least that was what the world thought. It is now obvious they were leading tormented inner lives before Amit killed her and hanged himself on Sunday.


The media will cover their tragedy extensively because they worked in the high profile sectors of software and finance. People will say wise things, such as, “What purpose did Amit achieve with this murder and suicide?” and “It only shows what life really is like behind all the IT glamour.”


Amit’s case is similar to that of Gururaj Kishore, also a techie, who killed his girlfriend Tanya because he thought she had become intimate with other men. He stabbed her repeatedly and dumped her body in the ghats near Sakleshpur last year. He was arrested a day after the crime, and is now in jail. So, are young people in the IT sector more likely to commit ‘crimes of passion’ than their counterparts elsewhere?


It is possible that jobs in the new “flat world” (Friedman’s coinage, to suggest the collapse of barriers and the levelling out of opportunities) extract more out of the young, ruin their balance, and drive them to desperation. It is possible that new job descriptions and super smart managers nudge young people along the path to overachievement, and self-destruction. Conservative India may look down upon, and secretly envy, the “permissive” abandon of the new workspace, but do these murders really show the dark side of our American-inspired IT dream?

Just a day before the Infosys employee smothered his wife with a pillow, a man stabbed a friend to death because he had sprayed Holi colours on his wife and behaved indecently with her. This happened in a working class neighbourhood in southern Bangalore, and among people who worked as painters
and carpenters. So what has “IT culture” to do with what happened to Amit and Rinku? It could happen anywhere. And it could happen to anyone.


Perhaps great writers, more than anyone else, can help us glimpse the complex psychological intrigues that go into the making of such crimes. The story of Othello, for instance, shows what ensues when a man is consumed by suspicion, jealousy and rage. The wily Iago, unhappy for professional reasons, fuels Othello’s doubts and incites him to kill his beloved wife Desdemona. Othello, initially justifies his action, but when he realises he has wronged an innocent woman, pierces himself with a dagger and kills himself with her body in his arms. (We know very little about what happened inside the minds of Amit and Rinku, but the verifiable details of their last moments echo the sad climax of Othello).


Othello is a black general in the Venetian army and Desdemona the daughter of a white senator. Shakespeare's keen eye grasped the subtle strands that weave a tragic story. Some writers saw in the play a lesson for white women who fell in love with black, Muslim men. Salman Rushdie interprets Desdemona's murder as a despicable, misguided “honour killing”. The police will tell us what they can piece together of the Amit-Rinku story, but will anyone ever know what really
precipitated the end? Failure of marriage? Frustration? Loneliness in a relationship? Shock of betrayal? Incompatibility?

Some couples cope with these, and even recover. Some are damaged beyond repair, but accept their fate and move on. A few go mad. That’s when the wreckage of love hits the headlines.

MiD DAY, 25 March 2008